Member Info for Looed

With big thanks to StarRage, it would appear there is a F.I.G entity -

Frontera Istern Georgia Ltd.
Georgia, 15 Dedoplistskaro district, Gorgasali 15
204905674
Limited liability company
06/07/1998
5 \ 4-1369
Vake District Court Dedoplistskaro Municipality
    Prosecutors
Partners
    0015, Frontera Risor Georgia Corporation, Cayman Island,
212274377, JSC Teleti Oil Company,
Directors
Subject, position, type of government, note 01024002412, Zaza Mamulaishvili,
Head, individually,
Share account number 50.0000 204905674-SH-00001 50.0000 204905674-SH-00003

And current status is "live".

Star thanks for clarifying. Just glad to know there is a F.I.G. I will take the new ID and will take a quick look to see the set-up date. Not sure the date proves / disproves anything but will see if it matches anything B-2-0 said. If I cant work it out I will let you know, cheers.

StarRage sorry one more thing. The documents with that ID all look to be from 2011 - am I reading that right? The other / later documents with different ID's refer to different entities - have I got that right?

StarRage - many thanks, I somehow missed reading your message. I agree the company reg number states liquidated. When I use google translate the company names are a real mess so when I look at the documents associated with that ID number I can't tell one from the other. Just for sake of clarity did you actually "see" F.I.G. as the name? If so any way you can copy for us to see? Not sure if that was in the translation link you supplied but I can't open that link.

Pt.2
Claim#7 under title "investor underpins PSA ext."
19/9/19- "The recent comments by zm on the extension of the psa is the most important factor of the arbitration and negotiation, the court cases are an aside and no longer are of material significance and will be dealt with. The gg terms would only allow the extension on the full scale development of B12 with major investment."
There appears to be no extension to the PSA. is this because there is no 'major investment'?

Claim#8
1/1/20- "B12 split, FRR Western to hold alll currently proven assets, Eastern to be returned to Gocg ( Basin edge, shallow fields). FRR Western jointly owned by FRR/GOGC, however, FRR transferred holding to investor (BP as part of deal. 2020 the alliance is initiated)."
BP is back again. The PSA ext was previously dependant on a SM and development of whole block. Whilst there is talk about the "1%" we have not evidence of this. FRR Western has been issued with a termination letter.

Claim#9
1/5/19- "10 months ago ZM signed a goodwill agreement as part of the OOCS, a separate company was created to manage the OOCS contract, the goodwill agreement is part of the OOCS and honours the outstanding claims being made by the GOGC against FRR, and to be explicitly excluded from the OOCS and protect the contract stakeholders. The Arb has settled those claims," and "FRR have acknowledged the handing back of the unused land and as part of proceedings and withdrawn their counterclaims and bringing proceedings to a close. GOGC are threatening to terminate the PSA relating to the land in question and request that FRR honour the Arb resolution."
10 months ago B-2-0 gave us Claim#4 in Pt 1 of this post. We have no evidence of any OOCS. FRR are not accepting the GOGC version of the Award.

Claim#10 - F.I.G.
I have tried, Mole has tried, Phil has tried and maybe others have as well but there is no evidence such entity exists. B-2-0 has not provided evidence despite repeated requests.

I am not saying he is wrong - but without supporting evidence I cannot say he is right. Mind you, not even Zaza can produce an iota of evidence to support his "we won" position.

B-2-0 we welcome your input but would welcome even more some way to substantiate what you say given it is in public domain.

Part 1.

I don't mean this to be a take-down of B-2-0 but as many are considering his enigmatic statements, in part because it might tell us what we want to hear, I wanted to review his claims to see if they underpin our support. He says the info he shares is in the public domain but does reply to specific questions that will help us substantiate such claims. Appreciate things aren't linear and can change over time .

Claim #1
24/12/18 - "The flock is preparing to go airborne - Frr, bh, bp and us fund in perfect formation all set for take off, just need to clear a few hostile drones before proceeding to gate four. FRR you are cleared for take off..."
B-2-0 makes multiple claims regarding BP in his posts. We have no substantive evidence such a deal exists.

Claim#2
14/1/19 -"The signing of the term sheet while Hope suspended is the damning evidence of breach and has provided the facility to service the loan covenant. Game over for Hope"
He also claims there would have been a oocs in the above

Claim#3
15/2/19- "FRR is no longer a speculative investment, it is now on the verge of becoming part of a transformational energy alliance for the entire region, in ultimately developing an international supply of both O&G for many years to come."
Without evidence to the contrary, FRR have had the PSA for Block 12 terminated.

Claim#4
30/7/19- "Asset to be transferred to Frr Georgia, Frr Texas holding company, new share capital injected from 3rd party farm in, existing share holders receive shares in Frr us. Other Frr companies liquidated and debts settled. Resolutions passed - it is time to fly after 20 years, get strapped in for take off"
No mention of BP. We have not received any shares in FRRUS. No evidence that debts are settled.

Claim#5 under heading "FRR to sign deal with investor"
9/11/19- The negotiations have made it possible to sign the deal to allow the investor to recover the investment. This is an investment into FRR!!!!!!, allowing for development and production beyond 2027. Nearly all negotiations ended positively but the crucial part is the banks are satisfied to progress with the deal - asset security threat has been removed!"
Presumably he means BP? The PSA has not been extended beyond 2027 - it won't see Aug 2020. There is no evidence of a new deal.

Claim#6 BP is mentioned in the message title
9/11/19- "The deal is ground breaking for FRR for many reasons. Succinctly it requires a duration of more than 7 years to payback - this is not evidentially a loan, it is a farm in or otherwise capital investment from a foreign counterpart. Most importantly is the approval for the extended period, although no duration is given it aligns with greater strategic investment and development program of the Black Sea energy alliance."
We have no evidence of this.

Mole - thanks for checking - I can well imagine how many hours this has taken you.

Disappointed not to get a reply from B-2-0

The Batumei site has 3 FRR-related articles with the one B-2-0 shared being the first. The second faithfully recounts the GOGC position regarding its arbitration win. The third, posted earlier here has a very pro-Western take on things. At no point do they refer to "evidence" that shows the situation is not how GOGC et al are making out.

If the deal has already been done as the article claims then why isn't Zaza on TV simply stating that "we agree with the arbitration findings and look forward to our new working partnership going forward which will focus on the developed areas still under our control" Why not just hunker down and focus on that - if that's really the case.

I found lots of references to Frontera International in the archive but no FIG. Like you I can't find any reference to this entity other than the article. We have lots of examples of inconsistent translation tools - though I have run that section of the article through a few different sites and the results are the same.

I found this in archive p24 - not sure if its FIG but I am heading out to dinner so can't check - will be great if others can check. There is more info on p24 but sorry I need to dash

osted by Oopsi @ 09:21 :-

Weekend homework!!
I've been doing some digging this morning and it appears that Frontera are obliged to file company documents with the Minsitry of Justice which are publically available. Some are historic but for some of the entities there have been filings over the last few months involving the JSC. For example see the fourth entity on the link below. To access the documents click on the information icon and enter the code. There are quite a few docs and they need translating from Georgian but hopefully by putting it on here we can try and join up,some dots and maybe get some further information in these dark days.

https://enreg.reestri.gov.ge/main.php?value=Frontera&state=search_by_name

Phil - nice one. I think Ivy was also checking this (with me?) and in the end the entity was approved - maybe Ivy can recall better and if it was this FIG. It was a few months ago.

Can you / anyone try to check via this site - it has a section for checking companies but it won't let me in - maybe it can tell I am in Asia?

https://napr.gov.ge/pol

Quite a few articles today that suddenly all make a similar claim -

"It is not yet clear what are the chances that Pompeo and Mnuchin will take action in connection with this letter. Firstly, the accusations have no special basis. Secondly, the US government has so far sought to position itself as an honest mediator in Georgia’s highly divided domestic political arena, and such an investigation would undermine these efforts, so it’s unlikely that the US administration will attempt to"

Source - https://russian.eurasianet.org/?????-?????????-???-?????????-????????-?????????????-??????-?????????????-??????-?-???????

No open response from Pompeo & Co = proves no pro-Russian bias and validates G.D. position.

There is another article that says no one cares about these matters except a few Opposition members - but that didn't stop them writing a long article about it!

"U.S. Embassy Tbilisi is pleased to invite you to a live, virtual press conference primarily focused on U.S. response to COVID-19 in Georgia, with Ambassador Kelly C. Degnan. The event will take place on Wednesday, May 20 from 14:00-15:00. It will begin promptly at 1400 with the Ambassador making prepared remarks, after which she will answer questions submitted by participating journalists."

You never know, someone might ask about FRR.

It says questions can be submitted live via text during the event but I am not sure if its only for journalists or anyone can try.

https://ge.usembassy.gov/media-advisory-ambassador-degnans-virtual-press-conference/

The arbitration was between "JSC Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation and LEPL State Agency of Oil and Gas of Georgia, on the one part, and Frontera Resources Georgia Corporation and Frontera Resources US LLC"

The cancellation of the contract was issued only to FRGC, FRUS is not included.

Many people are asking you questions so I thought it would be better to put them all here so you can help us understand better. Many of these are from Mole which you did not address.

1- Is the only record of the deal in the article you shared?
2- If there are other records, have you had access to them?
3- Are there records we can access to prove the legality of the asset move?
4- If so, does this mean the asset is safe from Outrider and GG?
5- Does the "1%" remain wholly under the FRR umbrella, thus ensuring original SH's are fully carried along with the deal?
6- What is the company registration number of FIG?
7- As with Q1, is there a paper trail you can direct us to?
8- Will this be finalised / made public before 27th July?
9- If the OOCC is outside the current PSA, will this be finalised to a different schedule?
10- If so when will this happen?
11- If FRR / GOGC have this agreement, why all the "political noise" now. Has something changed that means we need such political intervention?

If you don't reply to me at least reply to Mole as your answers might allow him to see the bigger picture.

Pt.3

He talks about the origin of Frontera Resources Georgia Corporation:
“Frontera Resources Georgia Corporation is registered in Cayman Islands. Frontera operates several companies, some of which are offshore companies and some of them operates in Texas”,-explains the lawyer.

The decision in the dispute between the parties on the one hand Frontera Resources Georgia Corporation and on the other hand Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation along with State Agency of Oil and Gas, was issued in favor of Georgian side on 17 April 2020, which was followed by number of attempts of Frontera to politicize the issue and spread misinformation over the content of the results of the arbitration dispute.

Source - https://www.gogc.ge/en/article/karl-prnbacher-frontera-was-trying-to-politicize-the-case-from-the-outset/482

(Many of these comments where released yesterday but this is a better translated version of the various press releases)

Pt.2

The demand of the Georgian side covered 3-4 main issues:1. First was the issuance of an order on the concession of almost 99% of the territories, which had to be done by Frontera back in November 2017, and since then was refused to be done; 2. The second was to prove that Frontera had committed material breach of the contract; 3. The third was the issuance of an order on Frontera regarding the reimbursement of legal costs related to the arbitration proceedings. In addition, Frontera demanded $ 3.5 billion against Georgia, and therefore our Fourth task was to protect Georgia from this lawsuit. If we consider now these issues, we will see that all four were satisfied: Frontera is obliged to relinquish the territories, the Arbitration Tribunal ruled, that Frontera committed material breach of the contract; Frontera is obliged to reimburse legal costs incurred regarding arbitration proceedings and the Arbitration Tribunal stopped considering the counterclaim demanding 3.5 billion USD after its withdrawal”- states Karl Pörnbacher.

In addition the lawyer states that Frontera never intended to perform the contract, neither during the period he started working on the case, nor before. According to the lawyer, the Georgian side has been negotiating the extension of the contract in the further period of 2017 from 2015-2016, but Frontera has never accepted responsibility to implement any of the obligations regarding investments.
Pörnbacher adds that in 2017, the parties resumed negotiations.Georgian side offered to resolve the dispute through negotiations amicably and even offered mediation, but Frontera refused.According to him, during the whole arbitration dispute,Frontera denied its obligation - to relinquish the territories.

“I am unaware till nowadays, whether they intended to return the exploration area after 2022. Now that the Arbitration Tribunal has already ruled that they are obliged to relinquish territories (which they had to concess back in 2017), they pretend as if they are intending so”-the lawyer explained.

He also emphasized that the dispute was discussed at the International Arbitration Tribunal by three high-ranking international arbitrators. Stockholm was designated as the venue for the process. None of the arbitrators, or judges, were Georgian - one of them was Swiss, another - a German living in London, and the third was a US citizen. The Georgian side now wants to enforce their decision.

Karl Pörnbacher states that Frontera was trying to politicize the issue from the very beginning, however he adds that it is not a political issue and a dispute, this is a purely commercial dispute and it was resolved on the basis of legitimacy.

Pt.1

Title - Karl Pörnbacher:” Frontera was trying to politicize the case from the outset”

“The decision of the International Arbitration Tribunal is quite clear and cannot be interpreted”,- This is the response to the ongoing processes around the Frontera issue and the attempt to spread misinformation by the lawyer of the international law firm Hogan & Lovells Karl Pörnbacher, who defended the interests of the Georgian State Oil and Gas Corporation as well as the State Oil and Gas Agency during the international arbitration dispute against Frontera Resources Georgia Corporation.

Hogan & Lovells responded to Frontera's claims as if the Arbitration Tribunal had rejected the Corporation's and the Agency's request to terminate the contract. According to the company, there has not been posed such a request and could not have been made, as the Georgian side would have this right only in case the Arbitration Tribunal would rule a material breach of the contract committed by Frontera.

According to Hogan & Lovells, after the Arbitration Tribunal satisfied a claim of the Corporation and the Agency and ruled the material breach of the contract committed by Frontera, the Georgian side had full right to terminate the contract and to send termination notice to Frontera. The company explains that this decision is irreversible and cannot be denied even in case of return of the territory by the Frontera.

All aforementioned is confirmed by the motivational part of the award of the Arbitration Tribunal, which also demonstrates the fact that the Arbitration Tribunal was aware of the targets of the Corporation and the Agency and the consequences in case of satisfying this claim.

Karl Pörnbacher cannot hide his surprise at the attempt to politicize the issue, saying there has been no such case in his 20 years of practice.

The decision is quite clear and is not a subject to interpretation. Georgian side made a proposal regarding disclosure of the decision in order to make it available to the public and the discussions to have come to the end, nevertheless Frontera rejected the proposal and preferred to spread misinformation over the content of the decision.

The whole discussion concerning who is the winner is completely useless and irrelevant.

The ruling “Georgian Dream” stated that the groundless and peremptory reproaches of the West against the Georgian authorities stimulate pro-Russian sentiment in the country, the correspondent of the newspaper VZGLYAD in Tbilisi reports.

The chairman of the parliamentary committee on economic policy, Roman Kakulia, noted that, on the one hand, the West spends money against Russian propaganda, and on the other hand, it stimulates pro-Russian orientation in Georgia with certain steps.

“We see a rather unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Georgia by a number of countries and a number of politicians,” he said.

So Roman Kakulia commented on a letter from four senators and congressmen to US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin with concern about the alleged deterioration of government in Georgia and the impairment of American business. It's about Frontera Resources and Conti Group.

According to the deputy, in particular, Frontera “has always created incomprehensible illusions” in Georgia.

He said that the problem of relations between this company and Georgia is now “politically manipulated”.

This often happens in other cases, which causes misunderstanding of the Georgian population, the head of the parliamentary committee said.

Frontera in the Stockholm Arbitration is conducting a commercial proceeding with the Georgian International Oil and Gas Corporation. At the end of last year, the American company, which three years ago announced that it had discovered gas reserves of 5 trillion cubic meters in Georgia, massively fired local employees on New Year's Day. As for the Conti Group, the participation of this company in the construction of the port in Anaklia, which is now frozen, was disrupted. A new tender must be announced.

American politicians who regularly criticize Georgia are often lobbyists of various companies."

Source - https://vz.ru/news/2020/5/18/1039968.html (a Russian site)

jv123 - you're confused? Join the club my friend.

As we haven't seen the details of the actual award we don't know the specifics. GOGC claim the award gives the right to claim material breach and cancel the contract. FRR have a very different take on events. I would say all we actually know that is not open to question is
1- Arbitration award has been issued
2- GOGC have taken steps to cancel the contract on 27 July claiming material breach
3- FRR have conceded on the mineral tax issue

Thats it. Everything else is conjecture, challenged by both sides and without any common ground. Mole is right about the GOGC being able to use material breach. We don't know if the award actually agrees with that interpretation. I know there are some posters who have stated the Award sits above the PSA (not sure if we ever cleared that one up).

As I said in my earlier post - I don't think it matters who won or lost right now as neither side will compromise and prefer to play this out in the political arena, or even more court cases. GOGC can keep claiming this is just a 'commercial decision' and so nothing to see here. Until we see the award, or they can somehow make a joint statement we will never know the truth of the matter. They are playing politics just as much as FRR.

That even if FRR had actually won / lose the Arbitration or if GOGC win / lose the arbitration we would still find ourselves where we are today. Both claiming a win, the other side is wrong, neither side backing down, the GOGC finding new ways to cancel contracts and undermine deals and things on the ground. It seems it really does need "politics" to try and sort this out.

Lots of these articles today about the released prisoners both pro and anti. I will only post the bit that talks about FRR, keep in mind this is a Russian site as will become obvious -

"Since the mid-1990s, Frontera has unsuccessfully searched for oil and gas in Georgia. Last year, her financial situation seemed to be shaken, because delays in salaries and the mass dismissal of employees began. The Georgian authorities considered the incident a violation of the contract and through international arbitration they secured its termination. And Conti Group participated in the project for the construction of a deep sea port in Anaklia. Her Georgian partner TVS Bank had difficulties - an illegal financial transaction 10 years ago was revealed during the audit. As a result, the troubles changed the leadership of the bank, and the authorities at that time, having not received confirmation of the financial viability of future builders of the port in Anaklia, decided to change the Georgian participant in the project. Then the Conti Group also left it.

However, the authors of the letter to Michael Pompeo, some of whom, according to Tbilisi, are official lobbyists of American companies, have their own vision of what is happening. They believe that the actions of the Georgian side are dictated by geopolitical interests: Ivanishvili is connected with Russia, which allegedly has documentary evidence, and the goal of American companies in Georgia was to reduce the country's energy dependence on Russia, as well as on Russian port infrastructures.

It is difficult to understand such a logic - for 20 years of work in Georgia, one company has not found worthy volumes of hydrocarbons, and the thesis about the dependence of Georgia with its underloaded ports in Poti and Batumi on Russian ports needs at least additional refinement.

Along the way, the authors of the letter inform Michael Pompeo about the increased activity of the Iranian business in Georgia bypassing American sanctions, as well as deterioration"

Source -https://gid55.ru/v-mire/2037-v-ssha-nedovolny-vlastyami-gruzii